If Tropical Storm Debby had taken a left instead of a right a couple of weeks ago, Texas anglers would be heading into the final weekend of the 2012 recreational fishing season for red snapper in federally controlled waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

But because of the vagaries of weather, the characteristics of the Gulf of Mexico's recreational fishing community and the seemingly Byzantine way red snapper are managed, anglers will get at least one more weekend to pursue what arguably is their most popular target species.

Debby, which early predictions suggested would head west toward Texas, loitered in the central Gulf before wobbling slowly northeast and into Florida just south of that state's Big Bend region.

For the week or so Debby churned in the Gulf, anglers in Alabama and the Gulf Coast of Florida were pinned to the bank. And because of that, federal fisheries managers late this past week announced they were extending the recreational snapper season for six days. Instead of red snapper season closing at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, the recreational season will close at 12:01 a.m. July 17.

The reason for the extension rests with how red snapper are managed and where the majority of those fish are caught.

Tightly controlled

Under rules set by Congress and aimed at rebuilding fisheries stocks depleted by over-fishing, the Gulf's red snapper are managed as a single population, with annual catch quotas set at levels designed to allow populations to grow while also permitting some harvest.

Once the annual quota is set, fisheries managers use landings data from the previous year - how many anglers fished for snapper, how often, where they fished, average weight of snapper they kept, and other information - to estimate how many days it will take anglers to land the number of fish equaling that poundage of fish.

This shortest-ever recreational season was set despite stock assessments showing the Gulf's red snapper population is no longer "over-fished," is rebuilding and is in good enough condition that the 2012 recreational quota was raised to 3.959 million pounds. That's up from 2011's 3.525 million pounds and about 1.5 million pounds more than the 2010 recreational quota.

But because data shows the average weight of snapper being kept by anglers has dramatically increased (a 6.39-pound average in 2011 compared with a 5.31-pound average in 2010 and a 3.4-pound average in 2007), it takes fewer fish to reach the quota.

This past year, according to federal data, those heavier-than-predicted snapper resulted in recreational anglers' exceeding their quota by 730,000 pounds.

That 2011 "overage" was subtracted from the 2012 quota and, when combined with the predicted climb in average weight of snapper, resulted in the setting of the 40-day season.

But then Debby came along.

Not a convenient catch

Had the storm taken a left instead of a right, odds are the snapper season would have closed Wednesday as originally set. That's because anglers in the western Gulf - Louisiana west of the mouth of the Mississippi River and Texas - annually account for only about one-third of the snapper landed from Gulf water under U.S. control.

Snapper fishing is very popular among Texas' offshore anglers, but we put relatively very little pressure on the fish off our coast because they are not easy to get to.

To reach areas consistently holding good numbers of snapper, most Texas anglers have to run 30 miles or more into the Gulf to find water deep enough to hold schools of the structure-loving reef fish. This is particularly true off the upper half of the Texas coast.

The combination of the cost of fuel for a 100-mile or so round trip into the Gulf, the uncomfortable effects of running in choppy/sloppy seas common during June and July in the western Gulf and the measly two-snapper daily limit conspire to restrict the number of anglers targeting red snapper off Texas.

Federal officials figure less than 10 percent of the annual recreational harvest of red snapper from United States waters of the Gulf of Mexico are taken off Texas.

The bulk of red snapper landed by anglers - as much as 80 percent of the annual catch, according to data used by federal fisheries managers to calculate landings - are taken from a fairly small area in the north-central and northeast portions of the Gulf, specifically off Alabama and Florida.

There, deep water is much closer to the mainland than off most of Texas, and that water is sprinkled with an abundance of artificial reefs that attract and hold reef fish such as snapper. Recreational fishing pressure out of the area between Orange Beach, Alabama and Panama City, Fla., is high, and so are snapper catches.

Because so much of the recreational fishing landings of red snapper come from that small area, any drop in fishing effort there has an outsized effect on catch projections.

That was the case in 2010 when federal officials closed almost a third of the Gulf, including heavily fished areas off Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, to recreational fishing for months in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig accident and the resulting oil geyser that spewed almost 5 million barrels of oil into the ocean. No Texas waters were closed to fishing because of the accident.

When the 2010 recreational snapper fishing season closed, federal officials estimated barely 1 million pounds of the 3.4-million-pound quota of red snapper had been landed. That had never happened before; most years, recreational anglers overran their quota.

To allow anglers the chance to make up some of that lost opportunity, federal fisheries managers extended the 2010 recreational red snapper season for 24 days, allowing snapper to be taken for eight consecutive weekends (Friday-Sunday) from Oct. 1 through Nov. 21.

Debby caused a similar, although much shorter, disruption of fishing.

Federal officials figure if weather and fishing effort in the north-central Gulf have returned to normal, adding six days to the 2012 season would make up for the snapper landings that didn't happen when the storm was in the Gulf.

Had the storm moved into the western Gulf, where projected snapper landings are much lower than in the north-central Gulf, it's doubtful federal managers would have moved to extend the recreational season.

One more weekend

The additional six days of snapper season may not seem like much to many Texas anglers. But they do add one more weekend, giving anglers a bit more incentive to head offshore.

And that's a positive thing.

Offshore fishing has been very good off the Texas coast over the past couple of months, with anglers encountering an abundance of king mackerel, dorado, ling, yellowfin and blackfin tuna and other migratory pelagic species that make summer offshore fishing one of the most exciting and enjoyable angling activities of the year.

It has been an especially great early summer for red snapper fishing. Since the recreational season began June 1, anglers fishing rocks, wrecked oil/gas platforms and other structure have reported finding lots of large red snapper - fish weighing 10-15 pounds and some pushing 20.

And because Debby turned right instead of left, we get a few more days to enjoy them.

Let's hope the weather gives us a chance to take advantage of the opportunity.